A Serbian guard says close to 3,000 Muslims were executed in a Serbian concentration camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina, The New York Times reported Monday.
Pero Popovic, 36, gave three interviews to the paper, saying he wanted to salve his conscience. His account of "ethnic cleansing" was corroborated by dozens of camp survivors, the Times said.The camp, which was open for four months in 1992, was called Susica. It was near the town of Vlasenica, northwest of Sarajevo. Nearly 19,000 Muslims lived in the town at the time of the 1991 census. Now, all have been slain or driven off, the newpaper said.
Every night at the camp, mostly civilian groups of Muslims, including women and children, were executed at the command of Dragan Nikolic, who oversaw day-to-day operations, Popovic and survivors said.
While Serbs have insisted that their camps were detention centers for prisoners of war, the stories told by survivors and by Popovic establish a tie to the Yugoslav army and to Serbian authorities in Belgrade, who claim the Bosnian war is an affair of the Bosnian Serbs alone, the Times said.